Having problems with textures loading very slow on Firestorm

[Robotshaz]

Hello all I need some advice. Noticed recently that at many places I go to there seems to be an ongoing issue with loading textures. Also I have just made some shoes and uploaded some 1024 sized textures that are jpegs. Those textures are really struggling to load on the shoes as i'm trying to click to change my shoe textures. Though it isn't just a problem with textures of the shoes being slow and not loading fast. I have had problems with textures at events and places I have gone to that also struggle with loading textures. Anyone got any good advice on how I can get textures to load faster inworld. Thanks.

[CaithLynnSayes]

https://wiki.firestormviewer.org/slow_rez

[PheebyKatz]

I'd say use smaller textures, but if you want good detail, yeah 1024 is better. Honestly.

I know it might seem counterintuitive, but I set my max bandwidth to way lower than I actually have, and it sped things way up.

I can download a gigabyte in under a minute, but I set my max to 500 kbps, and got really good results.

[EliseAnne85]

21 hours ago, Robotshaz said:

Hello all I need some advice. Noticed recently that at many places I go to there seems to be an ongoing issue with loading textures. Also I have just made some shoes and uploaded some 1024 sized textures that are jpegs. Those textures are really struggling to load on the shoes as i'm trying to click to change my shoe textures. Though it isn't just a problem with textures of the shoes being slow and not loading fast. I have had problems with textures at events and places I have gone to that also struggle with loading textures. Anyone got any good advice on how I can get textures to load faster inworld. Thanks.

Clean.  Clean out programs you aren't using.  Clean out as many old files stored in your computer you aren't using.  Clean out inventory of as much as you can.  Clean your fans with a can of compressed gas.  Unplug from your power supply and wait a few minutes, then reboot.  Pull the power supply cord only.   Try a *new* alt first and see if things are rezzing faster when you have no inventory or a heavy poly body.   These are some things to try.   Plus, remember it's holiday internet traffic time, too.

Edited November 21, 2022 by EliseAnne85

[Jennifer Boyle]

22 hours ago, Robotshaz said:

Hello all I need some advice. Noticed recently that at many places I go to there seems to be an ongoing issue with loading textures. Also I have just made some shoes and uploaded some 1024 sized textures that are jpegs. Those textures are really struggling to load on the shoes as i'm trying to click to change my shoe textures. Though it isn't just a problem with textures of the shoes being slow and not loading fast. I have had problems with textures at events and places I have gone to that also struggle with loading textures. Anyone got any good advice on how I can get textures to load faster inworld. Thanks.

I do not claim to be knowledgeable.

I notice very slow loading of textures sometimes. It seems to me that it's just that some days SL is slow to load textures, and other days, it's much faster. I do not think it has anything to do with my computer, which is quite powerful, or my connection, which is 1,000 gbps fiber. These don't change significantly over the short term like texture-loading speed does.

The only thing that I know of that I can do to speed loading is decrease draw distance drastically, which doesn't really speed it up, but does seem to make the textures that are close load faster.

[Nalates Urriah]

 @Robotshaz Forget cleaning out your computer. That is NOT going to help with your SL texture rez... unless your disk is so full you can't have a large viewer cache. I'll come back to that.

First, where in the world are you located? Just a general location.

Next open your viewer and click HELP->About... and paste that info here. We are looking for a couple of things; Packet Loss, draw distance, and video driver version. The most impact on your rez speed will be packet loss and draw distance. But, stay online 5 minutes or so before clicking HELP. When we first login there is typically a flurry of lost packs. After that things seem to level off.

If your packet loss is <=1% that is decent and should not be a problem. 0% is ideal.

While you wait press Shift-Ctrl-1 to open the Viewer Stats. Look at your PING. 250ms is slow. Hopefully you are under 250. I am typically 40 to 80ms. The larger this number the slower things will be. Over 250 and you start to see serious lag.

Look a bit farther down the panel under Simulator for Time Dilation and SIM FPS. These should ideally be 45. Less than 30 and the region is lagging. In which case you'll see a bit of lag.

Also take a look farther down at Total Unacked Data. Hopefully this is a low number like <500k and the closer to 0 the better.

If any of the above numbers are higher than suggested then they are contributing to your rez lag. If they are good, go to SpeedTest.net and see how your connection is doing. SpeedTest.net is a general quality test. It does not test the actual connection the SL servers.

Once we have this information we can start making recommendations on what you may need to change or who to yell at.

As to disk space... look at your Preferences and see the size of your viewer's cache. In Firestorm that is in Preferences (Ctrl-P with viewer open)->Network & Files (tab)->Directories (tab). This should be as large as you can make it. You can move the cache to any drive in your computer that has more space.

There is also the possible problem that you are hanging out on poorly built regions. So give us the name of a region where you see the problem.

Draw Distance is another possible and easily fixed reason for rez-lag. For shopping 64m to 128m is reasonable. For flying and driving 512m is reasonable. At 512 you are asking your viewer to pull in textures and stuff from 9 regions. That WILL take some time. Try reducing your Draw Distance.

Edited November 21, 2022 by Nalates Urriah

[LittleMe Jewell]

1 hour ago, EliseAnne85 said:

Clean.  Clean out programs you aren't using.  Clean out as many old files stored in your computer you aren't using.  Clean out inventory of as much as you can.  Clean your fans with a can of compressed gas.  Unplug from your power supply and wait a few minutes, then reboot.  Pull the power supply cord only.   Try a *new* alt first and see if things are rezzing faster when you have no inventory or a heavy poly body.   These are some things to try.   Plus, remember it's holiday internet traffic time, too.

The number of programs and files on your computer have nothing to do with how the SL viewer runs, unless the disk is so filled that you can't give the viewer enough space for its buffers or you have so many programs running in the background that the viewer can't get enough memory or has to swap a lot.

You inworld SL inventory size has absolutely nothing to do with how fast textures rez.  Inventory size impacts log in time and might impact teleport times.

[Kylie Jaxxon]

I agree with Jennifer...I usually do not have a problem, but in the last 3 or so days, very slow loading on textures

[EliseAnne85]

4 hours ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

Inventory size impacts log in time and might impact teleport times.

Log in and tp, that's it when new?  When I got this alt and had no new inventory nor heavy poly body, everything was way faster.  My tp's were the same when I started the new alt as compared to the one with the large inventory.   It was the world loading faster, which is textures to me, when I was a new alt recently.

If things are loading slow at this time, I think it's holiday internet traffic - people are making plans for get togethers or browsing for what they might want for a gift.  

I did notice an improvement in my SL after I did a cleaning on the other avatar who had way too much stuff.  I'm trying to get *that* inventory in order but tp has never been an issue.  

 

[LittleMe Jewell]

1 minute ago, EliseAnne85 said:

Log in and tp, that's it when new?  When I got this alt and had no new inventory nor heavy poly body, everything was way faster.  My tp's were the same when I started the new alt as compared to the one with the large inventory.   It was the world loading faster, which is textures to me, when I was a new alt recently.

If your computer can rez the textures quickly and the alt is new, with nothing in the texture cache yet, then the viewer isn't spending much time looking through the cache for stuff.

I've actually figured out, on my computer, with a 10 gb texture cache, I actually get faster rezzing when I periodically clear the texture cache.  My guess is that with a huge cache it finally hits some point where it is spending too much time looking in the cache for the texture.  YMMV

[EliseAnne85]

11 hours ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

If your computer can rez the textures quickly and the alt is new, with nothing in the texture cache yet, then the viewer isn't spending much time looking through the cache for stuff.

I've actually figured out, on my computer, with a 10 gb texture cache, I actually get faster rezzing when I periodically clear the texture cache.  My guess is that with a huge cache it finally hits some point where it is spending too much time looking in the cache for the texture.  YMMV

I've always wondered what clear texture cache was for.  Yeah, yeah, I know, I should have asked before.  But, now I am trying to optimized and clean my computer out to be overall more efficient.   I hadn't cleaned in over two years.  

Since, it seemed, the person in the first post, was saying it was all of a sudden, I thought perhaps the person may have reached the point of too much stuff and their computer got sluggish altogether.

We do have to maintain our machines though if we want optimum performance.  I'd think. 

But, this happening all of a sudden, made me think perhaps holiday internet traffic time too.

Edited November 22, 2022 by EliseAnne85

[Lindal Kidd]

21 hours ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

I've actually figured out, on my computer, with a 10 gb texture cache, I actually get faster rezzing when I periodically clear the texture cache.  My guess is that with a huge cache it finally hits some point where it is spending too much time looking in the cache for the texture.  YMMV

Interesting! The normal Collective Wisdom is that you should NOT clear the texture cache. The reasoning is that the cache is there to speed up loading of textures your viewer sees often. It should be much faster to load a file from your local drive than to download it over the internet. But maybe there's an optimum size for the texture cache...

[LittleMe Jewell]

57 minutes ago, Lindal Kidd said:

Interesting! The normal Collective Wisdom is that you should NOT clear the texture cache. The reasoning is that the cache is there to speed up loading of textures your viewer sees often. It should be much faster to load a file from your local drive than to download it over the internet. But maybe there's an optimum size for the texture cache...

Yeah, I've been playing around with it and haven't found that 'sweet' spot on size yet.  It also seems to take quite a few months before things just seem to bog down for no reason and then I get fed up and decide to blow away the cache.  I actually delete both the object cache and texture cache folders.  I cannot explain it but things really do run faster for me afterwards.

[AlexandriaBrangwin]

Well not many know that saving your jpgs at 75% quality does make a difference....as does a light gaussian blur.

But I think Linden Lab didn't buy enough bandwidth from Amazon Cloud servers, and the moment you need it....it all goes to someone else while you're sitting there....taps wide open...looking at grey shapes & your network bubbling along at 4kbps usage.

[Nalates Urriah]

On 11/21/2022 at 5:19 PM, EliseAnne85 said:

Log in and tp, that's it when new?  When I got this alt and had no new inventory nor heavy poly body, everything was way faster.  My tp's were the same when I started the new alt as compared to the one with the large inventory.   It was the world loading faster, which is textures to me, when I was a new alt recently.

If things are loading slow at this time, I think it's holiday internet traffic - people are making plans for get togethers or browsing for what they might want for a gift.  

I did notice an improvement in my SL after I did a cleaning on the other avatar who had way too much stuff.  I'm trying to get *that* inventory in order but tp has never been an issue.  

 

There is a huge amount of misinformation out and about. Time is the factor that confuses people. I had [insert whatever problem here] and cleared my cache and the problem went away. The fix was likely the required relog. During the time needed to relog the Internet changed... at least the part carrying your connection to the SL servers.

Inventory in the viewer is a collection of pointers to stuff in the asset database. An inventory entry is in simplified parlance the name you see and an UUID. The viewer and SL system use the UUID to fetch the item from the server side storage. The inventory entry is just a few bytes of information.... something ~256... You can use MemHistory, a free app, to check and see how much memory the viewer uses when using an account with a large inventory and one with a small inventory.

On 11/21/2022 at 5:40 PM, EliseAnne85 said:

I've always wondered what clear texture cache was for.  Yeah, yeah, I know, I should have asked before.  But, now I am trying to optimized and clean my computer out to be overall more efficient.   I hadn't cleaned in over two years.  

Since, it seemed, the person in the first post, was saying it was all of a sudden, I thought perhaps the person may have reached the point of too much stuff and their computer got sluggish altogether.

We do have to maintain our machines though if we want optimum performance.  I'd think. 

But, this happening all of a sudden, made me think perhaps holiday internet traffic time too.

If you want to OPTIMIZE your computer, read something Optimize my PC. AVOID those apps that offer to clean and optimize your PC. In some cases they help. If you use any exotic software they can destroy it.

Currently the best thing you can do in WIN10 and 11 is open a Command Window (type cmd) as the Admin and run SFC /scannow. (System File Check). It will repair and damaged files.

If your computer is OLD, run CHKDSK /R in a Command Window as Admin.

These two will get you the best the most improvement for the least pain.

The Lab has revamped the viewer cache system. I think all the viewers have adopted and implemented the new caching system. So, the best cache size is the max. The cache is an indexed system. So finding the right file among millions of items is trivial and requires only a few CPU ticks of the 3 to 4 billion happening per second. The computer's ability to find, open, and load a file into memory is HIGHLY optimized.

The slowest part of the process is file downloading. If a file is not in the cache, then the viewer has to get it from the CDN server, if it is not in the CDN server it has to get it from the SL back-end. Then the download to the CDN then to you has to happen. So clearing the cache puts a load on all of the SL system and forces you to wait. Fortunately all this is rather quick. But an empty cache sucks and causes us all to see a slower system. DO NOT CLEAR A CACHE unless you KNOW you have a file corruption problem. and even then CHKDSK should be your first troubleshooting step and clearing the cache the absolute last step.

People will tell you,  clear your cache. They age ignorant of what they are saying. But it is all they know to do. Most often while you are clearing your cache the system is self-correcting the problem you saw. You could have logged off for 5 minutes and got the same result.

As to holiday traffic... that is a real thing. Credit Card processing this time of year often lags. But we also have ongoing cyber-warfare. So I suspect there is a lot of intermittent problems. Relogs and giving things a few minutes solves most of those problems.

[Qie Niangao]

Making the cache bigger (obviously) cannot speed up textures that could never have been cached—which are literally the only textures I ever notice loading. If a larger cache makes that not-finding-in-cache process even a tiny bit slower, it's a deal breaker.

[Samara Sharkfin]

My firestorm was loading textures super-happy-snappy-quickly ...until 2-3 weeks ago

Textures started to appear very late, and some were really stubborn and toke ages to load despite asking for >texture reload< and some nervous "magic zooming". Everything else was loading normally, well, beside avatars ...but that's another story.
So I waited a while thinking that something is going on with servers or communications LL/AWS side, and they will fix it. So no hurry, and no taking time to seek for solutions, since it's "normal procedure" as i seen enough of it.

As i read in past that system security (antivirus and firewall) was an issue for some people, i tried that a week ago. I excluded from Windows the files and folders as explained on the Firestorm wiki, and  \o/ YES! \o/   ....texture load quick again!
So if nothing changed LL/AWS side, that might be a fix to try out.

Not happy to need to fiddle with system security tho.
I do not experience any other programs having issues with my system security, so... ???
 

[Ingrid Ingersoll]

Yeah the most recent Firestorm viewer does the same for me. 

You can download older versions here, which is what I did and I'm having a much better time.

https://wiki.firestormviewer.org/fs_older_downloads

[Charlotte Bartlett]

Aside from that… shoes really do not need 1024 sized textures unless it is one map for the whole piece (and even then borderline) if It is has multiple 1024 textures, that’s poorly optimized. 

[PheebyKatz]

22 hours ago, Samara Sharkfin said:

Not happy to need to fiddle with system security tho.
I do not experience any other programs having issues with my system security, so... ???
 

I'd venture to say that the majority of other programs aren't engaged in more than one form of network traffic, either. It's not some crappy design flaw or anything, it's just how the viewer works. And it's not so bad as "fiddling with system security" can make it sound. It's just whitelisting the viewer in your firewall's prefs. I realize putting any effort into optimizing one's own experience is anathema to most people, but really, it's about as difficult as finding clean underwear, and you only have to do it once.

I also notice people referring to their viewer's kbps as if it has something to do with texture loading. From what I can tell, it doesn't really have all that much to do with it. Even the maximum bandwidth slider in the network prefs doesn't really affect as much as people think it does (aside from actually providing better performance when set way lower than one might think they should set it).

My cache sizes are all set to 3GB (because I don't really feel like letting SL take up all my extra HDD space on my laptop), and this works fine for me, but then I don't hop all over the grid every day, like many other Residents. As for clearing caches, yeah, only do it if files are corrupted. If files are corrupted, you really should probably clear the cache, despite someone at a helper spot I won't name insisting that it must NEVER be done and that the best way to fix a corrupted cached animation file is to "just buy a different one". I would hate to see what the inside of their refrigerator looks like. Or smell it.

On the texture dimensions subject, a 512x512 texture on my t-shirt makes everything rastery and grainy, and a 1024x1024 texture makes it look good. If this is somehow a damnable practice, then let me be damned. At least I won't look like 2009.

Edited December 2, 2022 by PheebyKatz

[Nick0678]

22 hours ago, Samara Sharkfin said:

Not happy to need to fiddle with system security tho.

You are running Microsoft Windows, your system is insecure by default.. and always will be.

Whitelisting SL's "cache directory" so that textures won't be scanned for a millionth time, is the least of your problems.

[Qie Niangao]

15 minutes ago, PheebyKatz said:

My cache sizes are all set to 3GB (because I don't really feel like letting SL take up all my extra HDD space on my laptop), and this works fine for me, but then I don't hop all over the grid every day, like many other Residents.

… and those of us who often do hop all over the grid are fine with a smaller cache because there's pretty much zero chance of encountering the same texture again for any practical cache size, however immense.

(It never ceases to amaze me, the religious devotion some invest in the most ephemerally-valued thing on your disk, the SL cache. Blow it away any time, you'll never miss it.)

[AmeliaJ08]

How much VRAM?

For me this is the biggest issue I see, SL viewers are truly awful at moving textures in and out of VRAM which leads to thrashing, blurriness and general silliness.

It's one of the most obvious signs that things could be handled much better, your computer is likely more than fast enough to move a couple of megabyte sized texture from disk cache to RAM to VRAM (and back again if necessary) very quickly but as it is most clients seem to really struggle with this simple task.  SL can consume silly amounts of VRAM for this reason, it's so poorly optimised and anything less than 4GB of dedicated texture memory seems to cause thrashing issues with all the things people like to use these days.

 

[PheebyKatz]

1 hour ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

How much VRAM?

For me this is the biggest issue I see, SL viewers are truly awful at moving textures in and out of VRAM which leads to thrashing, blurriness and general silliness.

It's one of the most obvious signs that things could be handled much better, your computer is likely more than fast enough to move a couple of megabyte sized texture from disk cache to RAM to VRAM (and back again if necessary) very quickly but as it is most clients seem to really struggle with this simple task.  SL can consume silly amounts of VRAM for this reason, it's so poorly optimised and anything less than 4GB of dedicated texture memory seems to cause thrashing issues with all the things people like to use these days.

 

I just use a swap partition, myself. I found out my laptop doesn't even read the second memory stick, so all this time I've only been running on 8GB of RAM. This also means that all that time I thought I was on 8GB before, I was only running on 4. I don't have any problems with textures thrashing, even running on the minimum, and my swap partition is only 4GB.

I do myself have occasional grey, unloaded textures, but they go away after a moment, or I force them to if I'm trying to take a snapshot. I do notice that I seem to have the fastest load times shortly after (I know, I know) a cache clear, and when I lower my draw distance. But even with my viewer's GFX settings on OMGICANSEEFOREVER it's usually not that bad. I'm tempted to say, "install Linux, problem solved", but if whitelisting a program in a firewall/AV is too much for people to deal with, I know they won't want to learn how to use a BASH terminal.

If laptops actually included thermal paste like grownup computers do, I'd probably have my GFX settings on maximum all the time. I had plenty of problems before lowering my max bandwidth. Now it's set at lower than standard WiFi speed and everything runs as fast and as smoothly as it did when I got to try it with a hard-wired network on a desktop. I really think a lot of problems come from trying to use optimal settings without knowing that a lot of those optimal settings work in a counterintuitive fashion.

My laptop is about 9 years old, and has entirely the wrong sort of processor and graphics card for SL, by the way. Before I had this one, I used a netbook with a 20GB SDD, and ran everything off a thumb drive with a 300MB OS to save space, so maybe I'm just easily pleased by not having to deal with that nightmare anymore.

I do try to remember sometimes that not everyone is as big a nerd as I am, also. Sometimes.

Edited December 2, 2022 by PheebyKatz

[Nick0678]

7 minutes ago, PheebyKatz said:

I just use a swap partition, myself. I found out my laptop doesn't even read the second memory stick, so all this time I've only been running on 8GB of RAM. This also means that all that time I thought I was on 8GB before, I was only running on 4. I don't have any problems with textures thrashing, even running on the minimum, and my swap partition is only 4GB.

Instead of using a swap partition give this a try if you're on debian/ubuntu.

Might give you a slight boost and save you some HDD space, remember to disable the swap partition.

(Don't try if you don't understand how to revert it)

sudo apt install -y zram-config
sudo sed -i '21 i echo lz4 > /sys/block/zram${DEVNUMBER}comp_algorithm'   /usr/bin/init-zram-swapping
sudo sed -i 's/1024/512/'  /usr/bin/init-zram-swapping
sudo sed -i 's/p 5/p 100/'  /usr/bin/init-zram-swapping
sudo service zram-config start
sudo fallocate -l 2.0G $HOME/swapfile.swp
sudo chmod 600 $HOME/swapfile.swp
sudo mkswap $HOME/swapfile.swp
sudo swapon -p 99 $HOME/swapfile.swp